Despair
by narie the waitress
Summary: A quick little insight into the mind of a character - can't really say anything else without ruining it.


All disclaimers apply. Please, do not sue.  
  
Proudly presenting something written in all of 20 minutes. Therefore, not really revised. Beware.   
  
  
Despair  
narie_the_waitress  
  
  
  
You feel the despair, the anger, the fury, the fear, the sweat running down your back.   
  
You feel the frustration at not being able to do this alone, at not being able to work on your own, at needing help at every turn.  
  
You feel the shame, the embarrassment, the internal blushing that comes with running back with your tail between your legs to beg for help. The worthlessness of being sweet and blinking back the tears at your own stupidity, at your own unintelligence, at your own lack of capabilities, at your own stubbornness and pig headedness.  
  
You feel guilty for manipulating people, while maybe you aren't doing that, while most likely they are helping you as you have helped them before; but nonetheless you can't help but feel low, but feel unworthy, but feel useless and feel that this is all coming to nothing, that you can't take anymore.  
  
You shake your head and try to clear your mind, to find a shard of positiveness somewhere in there, to find a way to hang on and survive the onslaught until help arrives.  
  
You stand there, survey your options, choose the one that seems most logical, search your brain for a different one, for an effective one, maybe even for a back handed or back door approach.   
  
You come up with a different tactic, a different form of attack, but it leads to the same dead end; or maybe to a new-yet-equally-inescapable one. You run from it, you try to think of a new way, you experiment in your mind, you do test runs inside you head, you try to find a solution to the problem.  
  
For a fleeting instant you think you might be getting somewhere. You see a glimmer of beauty in the organized chaos, in the numerical religion of tactics and strategies.   
  
You pursue this new venue, you take a few wrong turns, you return to the main road and you try a new approach, basing yourself off the same newly developed plan of attack.   
  
You hear the ticking of a clock, somewhere, reminding you of the passage of time, of the many things you had sworn to do, of the many things that you are not doing and yet should be doing.  
  
And the frustration, and the tears of anger that threaten at the corner of your eyelids, and the pain, the mental pain, the anguish, the longing to make it all stop, to give up and surrender.  
  
And the guilt, the guilt that comes from that, from giving up, from quitting, for not being brave enough to do things on your own.   
  
And the knowledge, the knowing that really, no matter how brave you are you can't expect to do everything on your own, and it is okay to fall back sometimes.   
  
And the nagging voice that says that while it might be ok to fall back sometimes and let someone catch you, they don't always have to be there, they don't always want to be there and you can't always expect them to be there to catch you when you fall, to help you. You need to learn to hold your own, to be strong, to be independent and to not give up every time things appear loomingly large and overwhelming.  
  
You are stronger than that. You know you are. You need to find that strength somewhere inside you; you know it is somewhere in there, because you saw it last week, when you brilliantly tackled a situation akin to this one, and one week is not enough for it all to have ebbed away.   
  
But at the same time, you know that this time is not like last week.   
  
You need help, you want help and you asked for help some time ago, but at the same time you are too ashamed to ask for it again, to repeat the time old ritual of the damsel in distress. Even so, you are expecting the help, you are expecting some miracle out of thin air, you are expecting an apparition to save your life.  
  
You wait, you feel your nerves go on edge, you feel your self control slipping under the constant failures, you feel your eyes water, you feel your hands loosening, you feel your eyelids blinking rapidly, you feel your mind wandering and you feel the pain inside of you, the shame.  
  
Your fingers are tense. Your back hurts. Your palms are sweaty, your eyesight blurs, everything comes in and out of focus and you are lost to your own world of despair and reproach.   
  
You want out of there, out of all of this. You want the calm of two years ago back, you want the tranquility and the simpleness, you want the routine, not the constant challenges. You want to quit, but you know quitting will only make it worse, and with one final surge of courage try to find the ultimate solution, the solution to solve everything.   
  
You think you're getting there, until you feel something coming at you from the left, you see it rush towards you and your whole plan topples, your castle in the clouds plummets towards the ground and your resolve shatters into a million tiny shards that you try to collect as you watch them dissolve into smoke.  
  
You are back at ground zero, you are back where you began, only now you feel empty and completely useless and completely hopeless, and now you need a miracle more than ever, and can't afford to wait too long for it.   
  
And finally, you hear footsteps behind you, you hear the faint sound of someone approaching, you feel the gentle presence behind you.   
  
You look back, everything visible in your large eyes, everything audible in your quivering voice.   
  
You open your mouth and say the magic words.  
  
"Ami-chan... can you please help me with this math problem? I've been trying for hours but I can't get it to work!"  
  
"Sure thing, Usagi-chan, that's what friends are for. Let me take a look..."  
  
And suddenly you feel the universe pick its pace up again, like some rusty, sputtering piece of machinery that has just been oiled, and you see the symbols and the numbers coming together.  
  
And after a few elegant lines, there it is, leering at you, smirking almost, but confined to a short and simple statement.   
  
You see, once again, that faint light coming from the neatly arranged numbers, and you get the slightest glimpse of the beauty and fascination it holds for other people, and in a rush it all comes together mesmerizingly, almost magically, but now it makes sense.  
  
And then, but only then, everything is juuuuuuust fine.   
  
Until next week.   
  
  
  
  
  
Math is the most frustrating subject in my own particular universe, and while struggling with some IB paper 2 questions this little thing came to mind. I'm not so sure if it's how Usagi would feel, although it seems like a fairly good approximation, sort of, but you can bet it is how I feel most the time when I try to do anything involving improper integrals or complex numbers.   
  
I hate complex numbers.   
  
In other news, yes, I am alive, and I do plan on finishing WSWaD sometime before the world ends. ^^;; Criticism and nagging of all sorts is highly appreciated and welcomed.  
  
  
narie  
São Paulo, Brazil, 04.01.02  
  
(bakanarie@hotmail.com  
http://planeta.terra.com.br/arte/bakanarie/) 


End file.
